The L.A. Times music blog

Blink-182 is a band of bros again

July 23, 2009 | 3:18
pm

They were on a hiatus of indefinite length. Then Travis Barker was critically injured. As the trio gathered, the old times returned.

It took a brush with disaster to get the members of the multiplatinum-selling
pop-punk trio Blink-182 to stop giving each other the cold shoulder after a
four-year "hiatus" as a band. Specifically, it took drummer Travis
Barker nearly dying last September in a plane crash -- which claimed the
lives of his assistant and bodyguard -- to make the group's singer-guitarist Tom
DeLonge reevaluate his priorities and break the radio silence toward his
bandmates.

"We started talking again after Travis' accident," the boyish
DeLonge asserted with uncharacteristic somberness.

The co-frontman was
seated in a backstage dressing room before the band performed on "Jimmy Kimmel
Live!" last month. His mouth trembled with emotion before he lapsed back into
his default goofball mode. "There was some hate before then," he blurted out.
"Don't make me cry!"

But rekindling the bromance that propelled Blink's
potty-mouthed popularity as one of Southern California's unlikeliest arena rock
acts required that DeLonge, Barker and bassist-vocalist Mark Hoppus put aside
their personal differences and come together as creative equals.

"We had
to be friends before we could be in a band again," said Barker.

Hoppus,
37, recalled the moment of satori that would result in Blink's
resurrection.

"We were sitting in the courtyard of our studio one day,"
he said. "We had been hanging out for about eight weeks or something, just as
friends. And it was like there was a giant elephant in the room. It was like
when you're dating a chick for eight weeks. Tom asked me and Travis, 'Where is
this going? Are we going to do this thing?' Blink was obviously such a huge
thing in our lives. We realized we wanted to continue doing it."

He
added: "Not only with a sense of what we brought to the table but an
appreciation for what everyone else brought."

Now, San Diego's punk
princes -- who have sold some 13 million albums domestically -- are mounting a
50-date North American comeback tour that was set to kick off with a sold-out
show at Las Vegas' Hard Rock Hotel & Casino on Thursday night. Blink
performs there again tonight.

They are the marquee act on a bill that
features a rotating lineup of illustrious-in-their-own-right openers, including
the All-American Rejects, Weezer, Fall Out Boy and Asher Roth. Blink will play
the biggest venues and perform for the biggest audiences of its
career.

Some dates offer general admission lawn seats for a
recession-friendly $20 ticket price that includes parking. Nearly 500,000
tickets have been sold so far for the performances (including an Irvine date in
September). Several venues already have sold out.

"Tickets have been
beyond great," said Darryl Eaton, the CAA agent who booked the tour. "It is
unquestionably the breakout tour of the summer, with multiple sellouts and huge
overall sales."

Hoppus marveled at how far the group had come.

"We
started playing in small punk-rock clubs, touring in a van," he said. "None of
us had any aspirations beyond playing the music we loved and having a good time.
Next thing you know, we've sold millions of records. And the pressure was
gigantic."

To hear them tell it, that's why in 2005, at the height of
Blink's popularity, the trio's interpersonal discontent boiled over, prompting a
career timeout.

"It was never a thing where I didn't want to be in a band
with nobody or something," Barker, 33, explained. "In our band, it just got kind
of crazy. We took a break."

After Barker's plane crash -- which everyone
carefully avoided discussing, because the drummer is suing for damages a company
that owns the Learjet on which he crashed -- the course of action seemed obvious
for DeLonge. His reticence is generally credited with having prevented the band
from re-forming sooner.

"When you see opportunities in your life, you've
got to analyze, 'Why was that choice given to me?' " DeLonge, 33, said. "It was
very clear to me after Travis' thing that all these forces of nature were
pushing for [a reunion] to happen."

Still, moments before what was to be
Blink's fourth public post-hiatus performance, the bandmates tried to laugh off
a palpable sense of performance anxiety. Hoppus rehearsed stage banter that
utilized the words "climax" and "come inside" to pointed effect. DeLonge,
meanwhile, was busy re-memorizing the Blink song lyrics he had written down on a
yellow legal pad.

"Here's how wheels-off this organization is: We're
about to walk out onstage tonight in front of a national audience and perform
songs we haven't played in seven years," said Hoppus.

"Not to mention, I
can't actually remember all the guitar parts," DeLonge said. "It's all a blur to
me."

And the drums?

"We all help Travis," DeLonge said. "If he
can't play a part, we all fill in."

But when they hit the stage, Blink
performed energetic run-throughs of two of its biggest Warped Tour hits, "What's
My Age Again?" and "Dammit," for Kimmel's cameras. Then, glancing at each other
from across the stage with barely contained class-clown glee, the band members
decided they were having too much fun to leave.

"I love you,
Tra-vis," Hoppus drawled into the mike, prompting DeLonge to elucidate
for the crowd: "It's a physical thing."

"And I love you, Tom
De-Long-ee," Hoppus continued, just before the trio launched into its single
"Down."

With Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz and wife Ashlee Simpson looking on
from backstage, flanked by a gaggle of Blink's preteen children sitting on an
overstuffed sofa, the group performed eight songs (not including an off-the-cuff
cover of the Beastie Boys' "High Plains Drifter") over the course of an
hour.

It was in part a reward for fans who had been waiting most of the
day to see Blink; dozens were led up to a viewing area on the rooftop of a
nearby building, where they screamed wildly.

Hundreds of others hung out
in alleys surrounding the concert area, taking in the jocular, snotty tunage in
true punk-rock style.

With all of Hoppus and DeLonge's crude sexual
double-entendres and frat boy repartee, the mini-concert seemed more like a
declaration of purpose than a tour warmup. The implicit message was that
Blink-182 is back and as solid as ever -- that its tour isn't going to be some
kind of halfhearted, profit-driven road slog even if it represents one of
Blink's biggest paydays to date.

"This isn't a reunion tour," Hoppus had
insisted backstage. "That has the stigma of a band that's riding on its own
coattails. . . . This is a continuation for us. We want to make an album, do
what we love and continue where we left off."